Human ecology is an academic discipline that deals with the relationship between humans and their natural, social and created environments. Human ecology investigates how humans and human societies interact with nature and with their environment.

Establishing the field of human ecology

In the USA, human ecology was established as a sociological field in the 1920's, although geographers were using the term much earlier. Amos H. Hawley published Human Ecology -- A Theory of Community Structure in 1950. He dedicated the book to one of the pioneers in the field who had begun writing the work with Hawley, R.D. McKenzie. McKenzie used the term in his paper entitled "The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human Community," which is Chapter III of the 1925 book, The City, by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess. Hawley contributed other works to the development of the field. In 1961, an important reader, Studies in Human Ecology, was published (edited by George A. Theodorson).

In the 1970's William R. Catton and Riley E. Dunlap built on earlier works by Chicago School's Robert E. Park and Hawley. One main idea of Catton and Dunlap was to go away from the Durkheimian paradigm of explaining social facts only with social facts. Instead, they included physical and biological facts as independent variables influencing social structure and other social phenomena. This change of paradigm can be described as a change from a classical sociological view of human exemptionalism to a new view (named new ecological paradigm by Catton and Dunlap). Humans are no longer seen as an exceptional species that uses culture to adapt to new environments and environmental change, influenced more by social than by biological variables, but rather as one species out of many that interacts with a bounded natural environment.

In contrast to the Chicago School of Human Ecology developed by Park, Burgess, and Mckenzie during the 1920s, contemporary research in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine goes beyond the biological and economic foundations of human ecology to provide a broader, cross-disciplinary perspective on the ways in which human-environment relations are jointly influenced by physical environmental, political, legal, psychological, cultural, and societal forces.

A line of conflict between this new paradigm and the classical sociological approach is the de-valuating of society and culture. Human ecology views human communities and human populations as part of the ecosystem of earth. In this view, sociology would be only a sub-discipline of ecology -- the special ecology of the species Homo sapiens sapiens. Of course, this is seen as an affront by most sociologists.

Human ecology is variously a sub-discipline of anthropology, psychology, sociology, or ecology. The inclusion or exclusion of human ecology in sociology proper varies between countries and schools of sociological thinking. Environmental sociology is a field of sociology which encompasses the interactions between humans and nature/natural environment, but is rooted in the methodological and theoretical canon of sociology. Sometimes human ecology is seen as part of environmental sociology, sometimes it is seen as something completely separate. Influences can also be seen between human ecology and the field of political ecology.

Historically, University departments of Human Ecology have drawn, to some degree, on faculty from Women's and Gender Studies and other faculty specializing in child development and other studies of the family.

Quotes on human ecology

"In the absence of any precedent let us tentatively define human ecology as a study of the spatial and temporal relations of human beings as affected by the selective, distributive, and accommodative forces of the environment." R.D. McKenzie (1925)

See also

• Environmental communication
• Ecology, espc. Ecology
• Environmental Psychology
• Ecological Systems Theory
• Human behavioral ecology
• Sociobiology
• Rural sociology
• Environmental sociology
• Important publications in human ecology

• Robert E. Park
• Ernest Burgess
• John Paul Goode
• Garrett Hardin
• Daniel Stokols
• Louis Wirth

References

• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (ISBN 0-674-22457-4)
• Buttel, Frederick H. (1986): Sociology and the Environment: The Winding Road toward Human Ecology, International Social Science Journal 38: 337-356.
• Ehrlich, Paul R; Ehrlich, Anne H.; Holdren, John P. (1973): Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions. San Francisco: Freeman.
• Glaeser, Bernhard. (1996): Humanökologie: Der sozialwissenschaftliche Ansatz, in Naturwissenschaften, 83: 145-152.
• Arler, Finn (ed.) (2002): Humanřkologi. Miljř, teknologi og samfund, Aalborg University Press
• Gross, Matthias. (2004): Human Geography and Ecological Sociology: The Unfolding of a Human Ecology, 1890 to 1930 ? and Beyond. Social Science History 28 (4): 575-605.
• Last, John. M. (1998). Human Ecology and Public Health, McGraw & Hill.

External links

Human Ecology Publications

• Human Ecology Review, the journal of SHE
• Human Ecology : An Interdisciplinary Journal
• Human Ecology Review ISSN 1074-4827

Colleges and Academic Departments of Human Ecology

• Australian National University : Human Ecology Studies
• Australasian School of Human Ecology
• Bitonte College : Health & Human Ecology
• Brescia U. : Human Ecology, Food and Nutrition
• Cameron U. : Psych. & Human Ecology
• Cinvestav : Maestría en Ecología Humana
• College of Human Ecology at Kansas State University
• College of the Atlantic, College of the Atlantic
• College of Human Ecology at Cornell University
• Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, New Jersey, U.S.
• College of Human Ecology at [[University of the Philippines, Los Bańos]]
• http://www.hecol.ualberta.ca/ Degree Programs in Human Ecology, Alberta, Canada.
• Masters in Human Ecology, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
• College of Human Ecology at Ohio State University
• Department of Human Ecology at U. Texas/Austin
• East Carolina U. : College of Human Ecology
• Göteborg U. : Human Ecology Studies
• Kyung Hee U. : School of Human Ecology
• Louisiana State : School of Human Ecology
• Louisiana Tech Human Ecology
• Morgan U. : Dept. of Human Ecology
• Ohio State : College of Human Ecology
• Rutgers Dept. of Human Ecology
• School of Social Ecology at University of California, Irvine
• Seoul National University : College of Human Ecology
• Tennessee Tech : School of Human Ecology
• Texas A&M : Agriculture, Nutrition and Human Ecology
• University of Alberta, Human Ecology Degree programs
• U. of Manitoba : Faculty of Human Ecology
• U. of Maryland : Dept. of Human Ecology
• U. of Tennessee : Dept. of Human Ecology
• U. of Texas : Dept. of Human Ecology
• U. of Wisconsin : School of Human Ecology
• Universität Klagenfurt : Institute of Social Ecology
• Virginia State : Dept. of Human Ecology
• Vrije Universiteit Brussels
• Aalborg Universitet, Denmark: Diploma education in Human Ecology

Human Ecology Research and Applications Centers

• Centre for Human Ecology, Scotland
• HumanEcologyForum.org, Human Ecology Global Collaboration and Communication Network
• Institute of Human Ecology, China
• U. College London : Human Ecology Research Group

Human Ecology Societies and Associations

• Society for Human Ecology (SHE)

Human Ecology Resources

• Long link list at SHE
• "What is Human Ecology?" at University of Oxford

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